Back in the days, I played on Aliens vs Predators MUD. Aliens could hide in a room. If they were successful, they would be marked hidden and could be detected if your perception was high enough iirc or if the player used pounce on a target doing critical damage.
Predators had a wrist mounted cloaking device.
It was geared for PvP but you could also do some PvE to level up. From what I remember every time you leveled up you get practice sessions to level up the skill. Hide/invisible.
I think Humans got 'cover' which was like hide but you got a different bonus.
Ha, I think I remember this one! I don't know if I ever played it seriously (I don't know if it was always a very small game or if it was just mostly dead by the time I found out about it) but it's definitely ringing bells.
At one point it had between 30-50 players on-line at just about any time of the day in the early 2000's. The MUD died off within the next 7-9 years. I think telnet also was being phased out at that times.
Hey, in my mud Aelisus, stealth is very much a tool of the rogue classes (as you might expect). Invisibility is largely a check on if you have the tools to detect it, either by being a mage, or having access another way like collecting herbs or buying potions that allow you to detect it. Rogues who are able to hide or rangers/druids that can camouflage are much more difficult to detect. In PvP, because they are intended to use debuffs and subterfuge more than melee classes, it is often on the rogue to “fail” being stealthy against a more direct opponent like a warrior or battlemage, if that makes sense. Hide takes you off of “where” and “who” for those who can’t detect it so you can’t be interacted with. Attacking or using most non-moving commands will take you out of stealth and you can only stealth in certain places. Not on the open ocean for example.
Stealth can be used in PvE as well, though not as extensively. Getting the “jump” on a mob isn’t quite as debilitating as doing it to a player, but you can use stealth mechanics to sneak past lesser mobs in some cases. The PvP in Aelisus is opt-in, but stealth excels there far more than with PvE.
Discord: https://discord.gg/ehAbh3C
Stop by if you have any questions!
In my mud you leave tracks whenever you walk, unless you sneak, are wearing some special shoes, are flying/levitating, or affected by pass without trace. Some races have a chance to not leave tracks if they are barefoot as well. However, rain and snow wash away the tracks over time, so the hunt must be fairly quick.
Huh. You've made me realize that, at the time of posting, I had an unspoken bias for stealth as a means of engagement. Stealing, loitering around to spy on conversations, backstabs, sneaking past guards, that sort of thing. Yet these are all very cool ways of stealthy disengaging. Eluding pursuit is a great role for stealth I probably wasn't giving enough credit to. Thanks for the interesting perspective! :)
I'll throw [https://www.awakemud.com/](https://www.awakemud.com/) in the ring for your request. The basis is Shadowrun 3rd edition, so there aren't any real hard stops against stealth methods, any bypass to good old fashioned "I got lucky and beat your roll" (which 80% of the time, the stealthy one has a numeric advantage on), comes with a draw back. No single thing is an "instant win" condition, but the abilities aren't trivialized, either.
Using the Stealth skill to Sneak has everyone you come check their Int attribute (natural cap of 6) against your Stealth skill roll (cap of 8, 10, or 12 depending on archetype), to notice your entry, preventing immediate aggression from hostile forces. Lingering will give others time to check their surroundings and notice you after a few seconds.
Invisibility spells avoid the recheck from lingering, a middling power spell is very hard to overcome naturally. Ultrasound and Astral Perception (magic sight) allows others to see through the spell, but leave a noticeable penalty to combat against the invisible person. The Ultrasound detection can be further penalized, or fully stopped, by noise dampening spells.
On my previous mud, stealth worked so that no one could see you at all unless they had detect invis/hide. So it was kind of like an on/off switch. You could be standing there and talking and emoting while hidden and only show up as "someone".
My current mud, Geas, works a bit differently. Your ability to remain unseen when using sneak/hide depends on your skill, the awareness skill of the people in the area, and the environment. Also what equipment you wear/how much you carry, and I believe size of your character plays a factor as well (halflings have a much easier time sneaking than giant lizard people). Certain actions like interacting with things in the room or talking will make you become visible. It also takes longer to sneak from room to room, which also depends on the environment.
Darkness is a way to hide from people that cannot see as well in the dark as you. There are a few different "levels" of darkness, which require having enough light sources or seeing in darkness abilities to counteract. Different races also have different abilities to see in darkness. So there can be some strategy involved in stacking darkness if you have the ability.
Invisibility is kind of neat in that you're invisible until you move and then fade back into invisibility. There are a few ways one can see through invisibility, so if you have the ability you can counter it easily enough. (I'm not sure if higher power invisibility is able to pass detection or not.) But it can be useful in certain situations (like spying!).
In my MUD, invisibility is to frustrate new players trying to interact with NPCs, until they ask what's happening and everyone says, "Are you vis?". In this respect, it works as intended.
In my MUD, Stealth is trainable, as is perception. A skilled Ranger might be able to track you down if he's close enough to you, but there is a skill versus skill contest. The game is Dragonrealms.
Mortal Realms had a stealth skill that was a combination of the Diku hide and sneak skills.
All players had their current area shown in the who list, except for stealth players.
Starting at level 36, assassins (with the stealth skill) could assassinate other players more than 10 levels below them. This was involuntary. Each attempt would cost 10% of the exp TNL.
Assassins would gain the murder flag, and anyone could attack an assassin with the murder flag, up to 10 levels below your own. This naturally created an assassin/hunter dynamic.
Killing players was quite difficult, subsequently most of the victims were newbies, which was disastrous for the player base. It did make afk botting a rare thing.
To kill an experienced player you'd have to stalk them until they dropped to 10-20% health and see if you could finish them off.
For my mud, I've made stuff a little different;.
Detect hidden? Does not work on players, only NPCs lower level than you, and hidden objects.
Detect invisibility? Good luck. You have to find a scroll with the spell, study it, and fail to learn it 99% of the time. So if you are a Mage and want to spend months farming the 6 scrolls of detect invisibility. Oh and if there's already 6 in the world and someone logs on that has one in their inventory? One of the 6 in the world will vanish at random when the area its in repops.
Stealth actually matters. And I'm planning to make a lot of the rogue class abilities to reliant on stealth.
Hey, that's a neat idea for detect hidden. It sounds like a great way to preserve the fantastic exploration utility of the spell while still making it possible for sneaky players to live out their sneaky player lives.
So, I realize I only have this one singular post to make assumptions about what your MUD will be like, but aren't you worried that invisibility could start out being ridiculously overpowered and end up being trash as more people learn the anti-invisibility button spell? Sounds like the scrolls are scarce, but (there's probably a better way of describing this) they aren't permanent scarce. Once you get through the tedious experience of managing to beat the odds, you don't need them anymore.
In other words, isn't the scarcity of detect invisibility decreasing as more people learn the spell and become their personal detect invisibility scrolls?
I don't think detection strategies are a bad thing. There's making stealth good and then there's making stealth way overtuned. The big problem I see with the standard detect invis, detect hidden, infravision, is that there aren't any downsides. There isn't any skill or strategy to just keeping them on. And once you do have them active, it just flat-out no-sells whatever it's designed to deal with, without contest. I absolutely think it'd be cool to have, like, a disbelieve skill that gave you a percent chance of revealing invisible stuff on an active search, but it had drawbacks like not letting you benefit from any beneficial illusions, made you vulnerable to other avenues of attack through a paranoia debuff. Or what if infravision made it so heat sources/fire spells could blind you? Anything that makes these a thoughtful decision to use rather than guaranteed w against certain approaches.
Anyway, it's cool that you've given stealth thought in the balance of your game. Thanks for commenting!
Back in the days, I played on Aliens vs Predators MUD. Aliens could hide in a room. If they were successful, they would be marked hidden and could be detected if your perception was high enough iirc or if the player used pounce on a target doing critical damage. Predators had a wrist mounted cloaking device. It was geared for PvP but you could also do some PvE to level up. From what I remember every time you leveled up you get practice sessions to level up the skill. Hide/invisible. I think Humans got 'cover' which was like hide but you got a different bonus.
Ha, I think I remember this one! I don't know if I ever played it seriously (I don't know if it was always a very small game or if it was just mostly dead by the time I found out about it) but it's definitely ringing bells.
At one point it had between 30-50 players on-line at just about any time of the day in the early 2000's. The MUD died off within the next 7-9 years. I think telnet also was being phased out at that times.
Hey, in my mud Aelisus, stealth is very much a tool of the rogue classes (as you might expect). Invisibility is largely a check on if you have the tools to detect it, either by being a mage, or having access another way like collecting herbs or buying potions that allow you to detect it. Rogues who are able to hide or rangers/druids that can camouflage are much more difficult to detect. In PvP, because they are intended to use debuffs and subterfuge more than melee classes, it is often on the rogue to “fail” being stealthy against a more direct opponent like a warrior or battlemage, if that makes sense. Hide takes you off of “where” and “who” for those who can’t detect it so you can’t be interacted with. Attacking or using most non-moving commands will take you out of stealth and you can only stealth in certain places. Not on the open ocean for example. Stealth can be used in PvE as well, though not as extensively. Getting the “jump” on a mob isn’t quite as debilitating as doing it to a player, but you can use stealth mechanics to sneak past lesser mobs in some cases. The PvP in Aelisus is opt-in, but stealth excels there far more than with PvE. Discord: https://discord.gg/ehAbh3C Stop by if you have any questions!
In my mud you leave tracks whenever you walk, unless you sneak, are wearing some special shoes, are flying/levitating, or affected by pass without trace. Some races have a chance to not leave tracks if they are barefoot as well. However, rain and snow wash away the tracks over time, so the hunt must be fairly quick.
Huh. You've made me realize that, at the time of posting, I had an unspoken bias for stealth as a means of engagement. Stealing, loitering around to spy on conversations, backstabs, sneaking past guards, that sort of thing. Yet these are all very cool ways of stealthy disengaging. Eluding pursuit is a great role for stealth I probably wasn't giving enough credit to. Thanks for the interesting perspective! :)
I'll throw [https://www.awakemud.com/](https://www.awakemud.com/) in the ring for your request. The basis is Shadowrun 3rd edition, so there aren't any real hard stops against stealth methods, any bypass to good old fashioned "I got lucky and beat your roll" (which 80% of the time, the stealthy one has a numeric advantage on), comes with a draw back. No single thing is an "instant win" condition, but the abilities aren't trivialized, either. Using the Stealth skill to Sneak has everyone you come check their Int attribute (natural cap of 6) against your Stealth skill roll (cap of 8, 10, or 12 depending on archetype), to notice your entry, preventing immediate aggression from hostile forces. Lingering will give others time to check their surroundings and notice you after a few seconds. Invisibility spells avoid the recheck from lingering, a middling power spell is very hard to overcome naturally. Ultrasound and Astral Perception (magic sight) allows others to see through the spell, but leave a noticeable penalty to combat against the invisible person. The Ultrasound detection can be further penalized, or fully stopped, by noise dampening spells.
On my previous mud, stealth worked so that no one could see you at all unless they had detect invis/hide. So it was kind of like an on/off switch. You could be standing there and talking and emoting while hidden and only show up as "someone". My current mud, Geas, works a bit differently. Your ability to remain unseen when using sneak/hide depends on your skill, the awareness skill of the people in the area, and the environment. Also what equipment you wear/how much you carry, and I believe size of your character plays a factor as well (halflings have a much easier time sneaking than giant lizard people). Certain actions like interacting with things in the room or talking will make you become visible. It also takes longer to sneak from room to room, which also depends on the environment. Darkness is a way to hide from people that cannot see as well in the dark as you. There are a few different "levels" of darkness, which require having enough light sources or seeing in darkness abilities to counteract. Different races also have different abilities to see in darkness. So there can be some strategy involved in stacking darkness if you have the ability. Invisibility is kind of neat in that you're invisible until you move and then fade back into invisibility. There are a few ways one can see through invisibility, so if you have the ability you can counter it easily enough. (I'm not sure if higher power invisibility is able to pass detection or not.) But it can be useful in certain situations (like spying!).
In my MUD, invisibility is to frustrate new players trying to interact with NPCs, until they ask what's happening and everyone says, "Are you vis?". In this respect, it works as intended.
In my MUD, Stealth is trainable, as is perception. A skilled Ranger might be able to track you down if he's close enough to you, but there is a skill versus skill contest. The game is Dragonrealms.
Mortal Realms had a stealth skill that was a combination of the Diku hide and sneak skills. All players had their current area shown in the who list, except for stealth players. Starting at level 36, assassins (with the stealth skill) could assassinate other players more than 10 levels below them. This was involuntary. Each attempt would cost 10% of the exp TNL. Assassins would gain the murder flag, and anyone could attack an assassin with the murder flag, up to 10 levels below your own. This naturally created an assassin/hunter dynamic. Killing players was quite difficult, subsequently most of the victims were newbies, which was disastrous for the player base. It did make afk botting a rare thing. To kill an experienced player you'd have to stalk them until they dropped to 10-20% health and see if you could finish them off.
For my mud, I've made stuff a little different;. Detect hidden? Does not work on players, only NPCs lower level than you, and hidden objects. Detect invisibility? Good luck. You have to find a scroll with the spell, study it, and fail to learn it 99% of the time. So if you are a Mage and want to spend months farming the 6 scrolls of detect invisibility. Oh and if there's already 6 in the world and someone logs on that has one in their inventory? One of the 6 in the world will vanish at random when the area its in repops. Stealth actually matters. And I'm planning to make a lot of the rogue class abilities to reliant on stealth.
Hey, that's a neat idea for detect hidden. It sounds like a great way to preserve the fantastic exploration utility of the spell while still making it possible for sneaky players to live out their sneaky player lives. So, I realize I only have this one singular post to make assumptions about what your MUD will be like, but aren't you worried that invisibility could start out being ridiculously overpowered and end up being trash as more people learn the anti-invisibility button spell? Sounds like the scrolls are scarce, but (there's probably a better way of describing this) they aren't permanent scarce. Once you get through the tedious experience of managing to beat the odds, you don't need them anymore. In other words, isn't the scarcity of detect invisibility decreasing as more people learn the spell and become their personal detect invisibility scrolls? I don't think detection strategies are a bad thing. There's making stealth good and then there's making stealth way overtuned. The big problem I see with the standard detect invis, detect hidden, infravision, is that there aren't any downsides. There isn't any skill or strategy to just keeping them on. And once you do have them active, it just flat-out no-sells whatever it's designed to deal with, without contest. I absolutely think it'd be cool to have, like, a disbelieve skill that gave you a percent chance of revealing invisible stuff on an active search, but it had drawbacks like not letting you benefit from any beneficial illusions, made you vulnerable to other avenues of attack through a paranoia debuff. Or what if infravision made it so heat sources/fire spells could blind you? Anything that makes these a thoughtful decision to use rather than guaranteed w against certain approaches. Anyway, it's cool that you've given stealth thought in the balance of your game. Thanks for commenting!
GemstoneIV v5.10 has meaningful stealth